Finovate Blog

Document automation specialist HotDocs has announced a new integration. The company has partnered with cloud-based legal data management solutions provider, Advologix, to combine its interview, assembly, and template services with Advologix’s data, workflows, and “best of breed document automation.” The result, according to Advologix VP of Product Development Steve Stockstill, is an “end-to-end cloud-based document assembly experience.”

HotDocs COO Steve Spratt said the partnership would lead to “greater efficiency and accuracy to the law firms and legal teams using the combined solution.” He pointed to the ease of integration, courtesy of HotDocs’ APIs, which will enable legal professionals to build documents automatically as part of their business workflow.

Pictured: HotDocs Chief Technology Officer Mark Settle demonstrating new enhancements to the HotDocs platform at FinovateSpring 2017.

HotDocs’ technology enables the automatic generation of documents ranging from standard correspondence to complex contracts such as trusts and wills. Deployed in verticals ranging from banking and insurance to legal and the public sector, HotDocs’ software reduces costs, improves accuracy and efficiency, encourages standardization, and is available on site, on the desktop, or as a cloud-based service. The technology can be used as a standalone solution or integrated into a company’s workflow, document management or case management systems.

During HotDocs’ demo this spring, Mark Settle and Julie Rotz presented the example of a document processor at a large global bank who produces financial agreements for bank customers. On a good day, Settle said, this processor could generate three or four of such agreements. “These agreements require a long and tedious process that ends only when everyone agrees that most of the errors are probably gone,” Settle explained, “and that the risk of a customer receiving a document with errors in it is low.” In contrast, HotDocs enables document processors to select from a variety of document templates and then rely on a dynamic questionaire (“interview”) to add the necessary elements. Using the processor’s answers and the business rules embedded in the template, HotDocs is able to generate an accurate, perfectly-formatted, Microsoft Word document “in just a fraction of the time” it takes to complete similar documents manually. Templates can be modified by the document processor to add business rules and logic. Settle showed this by adding a conditional region to the template that will include certain language in the output document if the individual reading the document responds in a certain way. Completed templates can be shared with colleagues via the HotDocs Hub.

Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Edinburgh, U.K., HotDocs demonstrated its technology at FinovateSpring 2017. The company, which also maintains a U.S. office in Lindon, Utah, has more than a million end users across more than 11,000 client companies in more than 60 countries. In a very busy June, HotDocs teamed up with technology consulting and ECM solution provider, General Networks Corporation, enjoyed the “biggest and best global user conference” in its history, and appointed Mark Settle, who led the company’s FinovateSpring 2017 presentation earlier this year, to Chief Technology Officer. This spring, HotDocs was honored at the Digital Technology Awards, picking up Company of the Year and International Technology Star awards. Russell Shepherd is founder and CEO.